





' ' v ,.; 










•■' ■■■■•>■.: 












MI! /D^>^r? 


. 








j /C^ZjTe 


x£«il 












Class 33^1^ 

Book -^ 

Copyright N° 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



A Plain Man's Working View 

OF 

Biblical Inspiration 



By 

ALBERT J. LYMAN, D.D. 

Brooklyn, N. Y. 




NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
CINCINNATI : JENNINGS & GRAHAM 






LIBRARY if CONGRESS, 
Two Copies Received 
NOV 23 190? 

Copyriznt tntry 

CLASS A XXc, No, 

COPY B. 



Copyright, 1907, by 

EATON & MAINS 



T 



Every scripture inspired of God is also 
profitable. — 2 Tim. 3. 16, Revised Version. 



13] 



A PLAIN MAN'S WORKING 
VIEW 

Any reasonable religious address 
(and we must not unyoke these two 
adjectives) should start from ground 
which is not only common to speaker 
and hearer, but is also in agreement 
with the common sense of fair-minded 
men. In venturing one more word 
upon the subject of Biblical Inspira- 
tion, it is my first wish to maintain 
throughout, as far as possible, this 
common ground of a plain man's 
thought and feeling. 

The mere mention of the subject, 
Inspiration of the Bible, opens at 
once a vast field of tumultuous cur- 
rent discussion. As you know, the 
Bible is a world, a literature. Ten 

thousand bright brains are inces- 
ts] 



A PLAIN MAN'S WORKING VIEW 

santly busy upon it. A stream of 
fresh volumes concerning it pours, 
without intermission, from the presses 
of Germany, England, and Amer- 
ica. The critical problems which it 
presents are multiform, intricate, in- 
numerable, never settled, indeed, be- 
cause new ones continually arise. An 
entire lifetime would be requisite in 
order even to review all the questions 
now raised as to the authenticity and 
authority of the writings we call the 
Bible. 

If, therefore, our acceptance of the 
Bible as a trustworthy moral and re- 
ligious guide must be delayed till we 
decide these critical questions, we 
might as well relinquish at once all 
hope of finding within the Scriptures 
any final lamp for our moral 
guidance. 

Is there, then, some shorter, more 

[6] 



OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 

practical path to a working conclu- 
sion upon this subject? 

This question was shot upon me 
freshly and very forcibly by a letter 
I received some time ago from a col- 
lege man, the valedictorian of his 
class in a prominent New England 
college. The letter contained this 
straight and level question: "Can you 
tell me in what sense, if any, I can 
reasonably" (that word was under- 
scored) "regard the Bible as an in- 
spired and trustworthy guide in life, 
without waiting to settle all the crit- 
ical questions?" 

I felt, in the first place, that my 
correspondent was right in under- 
scoring that word "reasonably." If 
we cannot have a reasonable faith, 
let us have none at all. This is Prot- 
estantism. Nothing short of this is 
Protestantism. Protestantism, how- 

[7] 



A PLAIN" MAN'S WORKING VIEW 

ever, let us remember, does not love 
the noun less because it loves the ad- 
jective more. It insists as firmly upon 
faith, vital and genuine, as it insists 
that such faith shall be reasonable- 
True Protestantism has little re- 
spect for that empirical rationalism 
which, ignoring in advance, and with- 
out argument, the spiritual element in 
man, cuts in twain the higher reason 
itself, and so hops and flops through 
the country of thought, traveling upon 
one leg instead of two. 

Digression is a tempter, and in- 
asmuch as I have already yielded to 
it, let us carry the digression a bow- 
shot further. Protestantism, as I 
take it, is the equal balance of 
blended reason and faith, maintain- 
ing each of these in full integrity, 
with justice to both, and with detri- 
ment to neither. It is a reasonable 

[8] 



OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 

faith, both words being equally em- 
phasized. Some people seem to be 
so taken up with the adjective that 
they forget the noun; and others so 
pleased with the noun that they for- 
get the adjective. The former go 
careening into an airy rationalism; 
the latter stiffen down into an inert 
orthodoxy, or get water-logged with 
" saccharine sentimentalism," as 
Prof. Peabody, of Harvard, calls it. 
But surely this choice between all 
sail and no ballast, and all ballast 
and no sail, is a pitiful alternative; 
and the resultant controversy be- 
tween the men of the adjective alone, 
and the men of the noun alone, is 
hardly less absurd than the situation 
presented in one of our Brooklyn 
courts the other day when a hus- 
band and wife were arraigned for 
violent and persistent quarreling. 

[9] 



A PLAIN MAN'S WORKING VIEW 

"Can't you and your husband live 
together happily, without quarrel- 
ing ?" asked the judge of the woman. 

"No, your Honor, not happily," 
was the reply. 

Reason and faith, "now and for- 
ever, one and inseparable," is the true 
formula of the Republic of Truth. 
" Impossible! " cuts in the metaphy- 
sical empiricist, " the two terms are 
mutually exclusive." " Quite pos- 
sible and altogether appropriate," 
answers practical experience. Let us 
blend our oxygen and hydrogen if we 
would produce good, healthy drink- 
ing water ? You may not be able to 
state in definite philosophical or even 
psychological terms the subtle spir- 
itual chemistry of this union, but the 
propriety of it is attested by the 
full-toned symmetrical manhood re- 
sulting therefrom. So in the order 

[10] 



OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 

of the heavens, the planetary orbs 
may tug and strain to dash from 
their orbits into independent suicide, 
but because at once propelled and 
held in the equal balance of two 
diverse but blended forces, they pur- 
sue the order and beauty of their 
curving path, as if they rolled against 
rims of immovable crystal. 

Falling back sharply from the 
prolixity of this excursus into 
the direct track of the argument, 
we go on to say that the fear- 
less admission of my correspondent's 
word " reasonably " involves two 
requisites : 

First. A verifiable starting-point 
in our line of inquiry. 

Second. An intelligently logical 
method of advance from that start- 
ing-point. 

I therefore asked myself this ques- 
[ii] 



A PLAIN MAN'S WORKING VIEW 

tion, How can we, starting down 
upon the ground floor of verifiable, 
incontrovertible facts, steering clear 
of all special inquiries as to the 
origin of the Scriptures, taking them 
just as we have them to-day, no 
matter who wrote them or when 
they were written, assuming only 
what everybody concedes concern- 
ing them — how can we proceed 
upward without a break in the 
logic till we stand on the terrace 
of a practical working faith in the 
Bible as the supreme moral and re- 
ligious guide ? 

No doubt the question, so put, would 
be regarded as very amateurish by the 
average Biblical critic; but there is 
such a thing as dying of thirst while 
waiting for the analysis of a cup of 
spring water, and common sense as 
well as science has certain "inalien- 

[12] 



OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 

able" rights. I discovered that for 
myself, when put to it, I could find 
some hints toward an answer to the 
question even when put in this prac- 
tical and peremptory style, and such 
hints as I could find I propose to give 
to you, as I gave them to my college 
correspondent. I give them for what 
they are worth. They helped him to 
" pole his canoe up the rapids," as 
he said, and, later on, he told me they 
had helped other men for the nonce, 
until they could make good a more 
critical and scientific Biblical anchor- 
age for themselves. They may not be 
worth anything to you, but I have 
ventured to fancy that possibly a 
swift and straightforward report of 
one man's voyage through the eddies 
might be of aid to some of you. 

I wish you to challenge this line of 
argument now, to follow and attack 

[13] 



A PLAIN MAN'S WORKING VIEW 

it at every point. If at any point the 
logic fails, throw out the case; but 
give the argument a fair hearing. 
Don't stand and cavil. If the logic 
holds, then admit the case and act 
accordingly, so as to walk, as Socrates 
said, " sure-footedly in this life." 

The process of the logic, starting 
from what I call the ground floor of 
verifiable facts, involves four steps, 
each of them necessary. The first 
two of them will seem to you mere 
platitudes; but for me they are in- 
dispensable, and the only approach 
to the steps which follow. The four 
steps are these: 

First. There is such a thing as what 
we call intellectual or literary inspira- 
tion — in a word, genius; and the Bible 
exhibits in many of its writings — not 
in all, but in many — a very high de- 
gree of this inspiration of genius. 

[14] 



OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 

Second. There is such a thing 
as moral inspiration, and the Bible 
exhibits in most of its writings — 
not in all, but in most — a supreme 
degree of this moral or ethical 
inspiration. 

Third. The Bible exhibits, here 
and there — not everywhere (for I 
claim nothing but what can be 
proved) — marks of a special and 
spiritual inspiration, that is to say, 
gleams of insight so profound and 
wonderful, into the depths of religious 
truth and the spiritual life of man, as 
to be apparently beyond any natural 
power of production possessed by the 
plain men who, on any theory of the 
Bible, originated these writings in a 
rude land and age. 

Fourth. There are so many of 
these special flashes or headland 
lights in the Bible, and they are so 

[15] 



A PLAIN MAN'S WORKING VIEW 

distributed in the texture of the writ- 
ings, that they become interpretative 
and corrective of all the remainder of 
the Biblical record, foci of Biblical il- 
lumination, giving to the whole Bible, 
as we have it, substantial unity, ad- 
justing and coordinating our ideas as 
to the subordinate portions of Scrip- 
ture, explaining them and furnishing 
the means for practically correcting 
whatever errors they may contain; 
so that the Bible as a whole — and 
here is the heart of the idea — the Bi- 
ble, as a whole, becomes self-adjust- 
ing, self -explaining, self -correcting, 
and, therefore, practically trust- 
worthy, if w T e take the whole of it, 
as a guide to duty and to God. 

May I, then, beg you to climb with 
me this simple staircase of four steps, 
and see if they cannot each be veri- 
fied? 

[16] 



OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
I 

The Bible includes many writings 
which exhibit extraordinary genius 
or intellectual inspiration. 

The point here is that we take the 
position of the literary critic, of the 
student of language, of enlightened 
university culture. We insist upon 
our right to apply this word inspira- 
tion to the nobler activity of the 
human brain. Who wrote the Forti- 
eth chapter of Isaiah, or when it was 
written, is here of secondary im- 
portance. I know a diamond when 
I see it, whoever cut it. 

We agree with the evolutional logic 
when it affirms that the human intel- 
lect, in its supreme products, shines 
with something from the Oversoul. 
We agree with those who, from Plato 
to Emerson, find in genius a gleam 

[17] 



A PLAIN MAN'S WORKING VIEW 

from the Eternal, so that we look be- 
yond the "banks and braes of Bonnie 
Doon" to find the primal source of 
Burns's wild music, and beyond the 
meadows of the Avon for the secret 
of enchantment woven into Shake- 
speare's dream of the "Midsummer 
Night." "Poetry was ever thought 
to have some participation of divine- 
ness," said Bacon. 

We find neither extravagance nor 
irreverence in such homage. When 
we worship with Coleridge in the 
"Vale of Chamouni," or voyage w T ith 
his "Ancient Mariner" amid the 
emerald ice of the Antarctic world — 
when we follow Spenser passing yon- 
der with his faerie bells, or Calderon 
of Spain, or walk by the Arno with 
that stern Florentine, whom alone we 
name with Homer and Shakespeare 
as the three monarchs of song — then, 

[18] 



OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 

in the presence of such genius, we 
drop our compass and measuring 
line, and exclaim, "This is, in very 
truth, in some real sense, an inspira- 
tion of the Infinite." 

Now, on this scale of genius, the 
Bible, as it rests in my hand to-day, 
whatever may have been its origin, 
contains many passages which are of 
the noblest writing of this world. I 
will not overstate the matter. I am 
not going to give away my case by 
flamboyant generalization; but it is 
fair to say that the narratives, the 
histories, the dialogues, the parables, 
the dramas, the letters, which make 
up the Bible, clustered as they are 
about the same generic and progres- 
sively unfolding religion, set forth the 
ideas of that religion with a literary 
energy and splendor equal to the 
average level of the pagan classics. 



A PLAIN MAN'S WORKING VIEW 

We have heard the phrase, our 
now current phrase, "The Bible as 
Literature" — a good phrase, provided 
we remember that literature means 
more than writing, more even than 
fine WTiting. It means choice, su- 
preme, immortal writing. In that 
sense, parts of the Bible are litera- 
ture. Says Renan of Saint Paul, 
"His style, even simply as a writer, 
is one of the most striking and in- 
imitable that ever existed." There 
are passages in the Psalms and in the 
Minor Prophets whose poetic vigor 
and sw 7 eep of imagery match with 
Homer. And, above these even, is 
such a w r ork as the Book of Job, an 
archaic masterpiece, at least level 
with the higher summits of Greek 
tragedy. And still above this, su- 
preme in human language for beauty 
of form and truth to life, are the 

[20] 



OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 

parables and maxims attributed to 
Jesus. Nothing in Plato is at once 
more exquisitely natural and yet 
more original and profound. 

You will bear in mind, let me re- 
peat, that I am now not speaking as 
a Christian believer, as an adherent 
of an orthodox creed, an advocate of 
a certain religious technique — noth- 
ing of the kind. I am simply a stu- 
dent, at ease in my library, ad- 
miring genius, resenting any sham 
of genius, but aware of a certain 
thrill when I stumble upon something 
fine in Thucydides, or Anacreon, or 
Saint John's Gospel, or the Book of 
Psalms. You shall not, then, give 
me Juvenal and steal away from me 
Ecclesiastes. As a literary man, I 
object. You shall not allow to me 
the tragedies of ^Eschylus and filch 
from my bookshelves the drama of 

[21] 



A PLAIN MAN'S WORKING VIEW 

Job. Your chatter about uncertain 
date, doubtful authorship, is away 
off from the mark. The Iliad is the 
Iliad, wherever Homer was born. I 
have here, evidently, in some of these 
old Biblical writings, a literary fire- 
opal of the highest value. It fasci- 
nates me. The more mysterious its 
origin, the more it fascinates me. 

If, then, we assert in the literary 
realm, as we do, the touch of actual 
inspiration, the breath of the In- 
finite anywhere, we assert it here. If 
genius has ever caught a spark from 
the Throne, as it has, here it shines. 
If any writings on earth are 
worthy, simply as writings, of the 
admiring and passionate regard of 
the human intellect, they are these. 

Now this, for me, is the ground 
floor. This is verifiable. This is 
where I start. No religion in it nec- 

[22] 



OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 

essarily, but something that makes 
my bookshelf richer with the Bible 
on it. 

II 

Now comes the second step — and 
it is equally verifiable — the asser- 
tion of the preeminent moral in- 
spiration of very much of the Bible 
— not all of it, but very much of it. 
This also is a legitimate use of the 
word inspiration. When we warm 
ourselves at the furnace we need not 
ask who mined the coal. 

In various lands and ages have 
appeared certain writings which from 
their elevation of moral teaching have 
been known as the world's Bibles. 
The ancient classic world had its 
Socrates and Epictetus, China its 
Confucius, India its Sakya-Muni, 
Rome its Marcus Aurelius, Islam 

[23] 



A PLAIN MAN'S WORKING VIEW 

its Mohammed and Koran, and the 
writings of these moral sages have 
been called correctly the world's 
Bibles, because they express the pro- 
foundest verdicts of the human con- 
science. 

But on this scale our Bible, on the 
whole, stands unquestionably first. 
And the proof of this is found in the 
superior moral effect of the Bible 
when wholly open and duly received. 
It has in some real sense mastered 
the master nations. Wendell Phillips 
once made this reply in a coterie at 
Boston, when some one told him that 
Jesus was amiable but not strong: 
"Not strong ? " replied those never- 
blanching lips. "Not strong? Test 
the strength of Jesus by the strength 
of the men whom he has mastered' ' — 
titans such as Augustine, Cromwell, 
and Luther. 

[24] 



OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 

"Civilized society," said Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, "is a strong solu- 
tion of books." So the ethics of civi- 
lized society is a strong solution of 
the Book of books — the Bible. 

The Bible is the moral athlete, be- 
cause it has to some extent conquered 
the most athletic peoples of the mod- 
ern time. Possibly this is the best 
way in which to test the moral 
potency of a book, namely, to observe 
its effect, just as we estimate the qual- 
ity of a rifle by observing the shot 
rather than by steadfastly gazing 
down into the barrel of the rifle, 
which is the method of some crit- 
ics. But were we to look into the 
Bible itself, what shall we discover? 

Take, for instance, the Biblical 
thought of the Deity, progressively 
unfolded, it is true, but at last stand- 
ing complete — one uncreated, un- 

[25] 



A PLAIN MAN'S WORKING VIEW 

fathomable Personal Energy, in the 
vast vortex of whose limitless life 
dwells somehow an Eternal Father- 
hood, a mysterious Sonship, humanly 
incarnate, a Holy Spirit, quickening all 
things. Take its thought of man, as 
that God's true son, noble and erring, 
lost and saved; take its tremendous 
conception of sin, which makes 
iEschylus seem pale; take the amaz- 
ing grasp of its idea of human re- 
sponsibility; take the growing light 
and final flash of its vision of im- 
mortality — and you have an assem- 
blage of ideas by the side of whose 
moral might all other books or clus- 
ters of books seem tiny and thin. 
Even to touch the Bible and think 
what it has accomplished in the 
world is like laying your hand upon 
a. great hot cannon. 

Mohammed's Koran sounds well 

[26] 



OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 

enough when you read it by the creak 
of the slow sakieh as you drift on the 
Nile; but it seems verbose and 
petty when set beneath the colossal 
and fiery arches of Isaiah or Job. 
Marcus Aurelius is impressive 
when read in the ruined Roman 
Forum ; but the ethics of Aurelius 
compared with the ethics of Paul are 
like the Matterhorn in the pallor of 
evening compared with the same 
Matterhorn in the morning sunrise. 
No other book has either so recog- 
nized or so stirred the human con- 
science as the Bible has. Its moral 
insight is rarer, its moral breadth is 
nobler, its moral discrimination is 
surer, its moral pressure more re- 
sistless than that of any other pro- 
duct of the inspired conscience of 
humanity. 

And this is for me the second step 

[27] 



A PLAIN MAN'S WORKING VIEW 

following upon the first, and equally 
verifiable. Is not the logic reason- 
able, as far as we have gone ? 

Ill 

Now for the third step, which is, 
naturally, the crucial one, and yet, 
so far as I can see, as inevitable and 
verifiable as the others, provided it 
be taken from the top of the other 
two. 

When I have climbed these first 
two steps, and not until I have (mark 
this), then I see something more. 
But this next step is a reasonable 
step, not an unreasonable jump. 

I do not approach faith as I vault 
into a saddle, one spring and that the 
end of it. I climb into faith, up these 
successive steps provided by my own 
intellectual and moral nature. I walk 
up the staircase of my own mind. 

[28] 



OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 

Therefore the two great steps already 
indicated are for me indispensable in 
my path up to faith in the Scriptures. 
But once well up these two steps I 
am led on irresistibly to take an- 
other. To employ our rifle-shot 
colloquialism, I have to take another. 
Beyond the occasional literary inspi- 
ration, beyond the supremely remark- 
able moral inspiration, the Bible dis- 
closes, in certain places, here and 
there— not everywhere, but here and 
there — gleams of an insight so tran- 
scendent, into the spiritual nature, 
experience and ideal of man, as to 
be in sober judgment clearly beyond 
the human power of the plain men 
who produced these writings in those 
half-barbaric and brazen ages, and in 
that rude, provincial selvage of Asia, 
remote from all the culture and educa- 
tion of the world. 

[29] 



A PLAIN MAN'S WORKING VIEW 

How can I account for the moral 
beauty, the finish, the cosmopolitan 
note, the profound harmony with uni- 
versal human experience, disclosed in 
the finer Psalms ? Who taught the 
Syrian Semite who composed Eccle- 
siastes to be so modernly blase, and 
create a Faust in advance ? Or turn 
to the New Testament. Here also I 
assume nothing as to precise date or 
authorship. Here are the documents. 
We know they were in circulation by 
the latter part of the second century. 
Harnack pushes back the date of Saint 
John's Gospel to 110-120 A. D. But 
how can I possibly account, on merely 
natural grounds, for the spirituelle 
loveliness, for instance, of the Para- 
bles of the Synoptists, or the Dis- 
courses of the Gospel of John, 
by anything I can find in the 
Syria of Herod, or the Alexandria of 

[30] 



OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 

Philo — by anything, indeed, in the 
Roman empire of the first century or 
even of the second ? As well look for 
a spray of Syrian lilies bursting from 
a stack of Roman spears. 

But more than this, these Biblical 
writings, some of them, match the 
best inner life of men to-day, two 
thousand years afterward — of modern 
men, the finest modern men, living in 
a new age, interested in questions un- 
dreamed of in that day, interested in 
democracy, in physical science, indus- 
trial enterprise, social reform. The 
very inner essence indeed of the ethi- 
cal and spiritual life of the modern 
time is met and matched by these old, 
incomparable writings. What magic 
had the fishing nets of Galilee thus 
to anticipate the summit centuries of 
Europe and the New World ? 

These flashes of spiritual prevision 

[31] 



A PLAIN MAN'S WORKING VIEW 

are as much beyond the unaided 
human foresight of those plain men 
as yonder jeweled sword handle of 
Orion is beyond the reach of infant 
fingers. 

And more astonishing even than 
this is the picture the New Tes- 
tament writers give of Jesus. This 
to me is supreme evidence of some 
higher than human force concerned 
with the production of part, at least, 
of the New Testament. As you 
know, Jesus did not write his own life. 
So far as we know, he left no memo- 
rial save the shifting and wavering 
impressions left upon the rocking 
brains of a small group of fright- 
ened fugitive fishermen and ple- 
beians. Some decades of years later 
these exquisite Gospels appear, so 
unparalleled in the beauty, con- 
sistency, symmetry of the figure of 

[32] 



OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 

Jesus which they present. How 
then could a group of frightened 
fugitives so, on the whole, agree in 
the general tone of their reminis- 
cences, while showing just enough of 
difference to disprove collusion ? 

"Fear is an ague," says Butler, in 
"Hudibras." No intellectual ague in 
these writings, certainly! How could 
rude, uneducated men suppress all 
extravagance in narrative and pro- 
duce that which two thousand years 
later, at the peak and pinnacle of a 
new civilization, shall be counted the 
supreme idyll of the world ? As well 
might a group of common quarry- 
men, all hammering together, chisel 
out the Apollo of the Vatican. To 
my mind the gap is impassable with- 
out the admission of the aid of a 
higher than human intelligence, some- 
how correlating and aiding theirs. 

[33] 



A PLAIN MAN'S WORKING VIEW 

IV 

Fourth, then, and last. Only one 
step remains, and we take that 
swiftly and easily from the top of the 
other three; but not until we have 
climbed the other three. 

It is this. So numerous are these 
special supreme gleams in the Bible, 
and so distributed are they, that, like 
turret-top lights over a city, they 
serve to explain other biblical writ- 
ings; or, to change the figure, they 
furnish adjusting instruments by 
which to interpret the rest of the Bib- 
lical literature. 

Thus the Bible, as a whole, just as 
we have it to-day, becomes, in a true 
and adequate sense, self-explanatory, 
self-adjusting, and, so far as is neces- 
sary, self -corrective. If this can be 
made out we have our case; we have 

[34] 



OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 

the key to the working use of the Bible 
as the supreme moral guide. The 
limits of space forbid detailed review 
of the evidence at this point; but it is, 
if I do not mistake, demonstrative. 
The Bible itself, if one takes in the 
whole of it, creates in the mind that 
just critical temper, that fair and fine 
discrimination, which lies at the bot- 
tom of the highest of the higher 
criticism itself. Higher criticism is 
a child of the Bible, not an alien 
inspector of it. 

The New Testament, for example, 
explains, interprets, supplements, 
and, in a sense, corrects the Old 
Testament. " Trove all things,' even 
me," peals forth the Biblical com- 
mand. Beneath the intellectual chal- 
lenge and warrant of such a maxim 
true criticism is born. The Bible itself 
not only permits but explicitly re- 

[35] 



A PLAIN MAN'S WORKING VIEW 

quires the free exercise of free intelli- 
gence in reading the Bible. "It is 
the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh 
profiteth nothing." Spiritual insight 
and balance of judgment is here ex- 
plicitly admitted as the prerequisite 
for just exegesis — a warrant in the 
Bible itself for something more 
than a mechanically verbal interpre- 
tation of the Bible. So that the 
human limitations, the local idioms, 
the natural divergencies, the occa- 
sional subordinate inaccuracies in the 
various separate writings, become 
explicable and harmonized in the full, 
fair light of the Bible itself. Read 
the closing paragraphs of the Book of 
Ecclesiastes, for example — what we 
know as the last "chapter." It is of 
the essence of immortal literature and 
of immortal ethics also, and its grave 
moral dignity and rhythmic finish, 

[36] 



OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 

like the musical march of a great 
Greek chorus, give the clue to a 
proper interpretation of other por- 
tions of this puzzling Writing. 

The Book of Hebrews affords spir- 
itual interpretation to the earlier He- 
braic ceremonial law. The Epistles 
illumine the Gospels, and the Gos- 
pels themselves supplement one 
another. One Epistle modifies and 
adjusts the impression received from 
another, and there are single sen- 
tences which to the free-minded, rev- 
erent student give the clue for the in- 
terpretation of entire documents. 
Certain signal sentences, for example, 
in the Book of Romans, illuminate 
the entire letter, showing that it was 
designed and must be conceived of, 
not as a didactic theological treatise, 
but as a tremendous moral thunder- 
bolt hurled upon the then Roman 

[37] 



A PLAIN MAN'S WORKING VIEW 

world. So that classic passage in 
the thirteenth chapter of First Co- 
rinthians illuminates and explains 
the whole entire drift of those two pa- 
thetic letters to the church at Corinth, 
the saddest writing in the New Tes- 
tament, which without the true in- 
terpretation seem in some respects so 
perplexing. 

Always it is the higher that inter- 
prets the lower, the larger that inter- 
prets the less ; the finer sentences that 
explain the commoner; the whole Bi- 
ble that gives perspective in which to 
judge every document in it. In a 
word, these writings themselves fur- 
nish the standard and the method by 
which we may, to a large degree, ex- 
plain and understand whatever is lo- 
cal, partial, incomplete, or mistaken 
in them. 

Pull out all the stops in this 

[38] 



OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 

organ of the Bible. Let it play as a 
whole, freely, in the midst of your 
own free mind and moral nature, and 
the total resultant impression and 
effect will be to create a mental atti- 
tude and atmosphere to which the 
Bible itself becomes like a self- 
adjusting telescope. Not that the 
Bible, even when thus used, will give 
a complete answer to all the ques- 
tions you may ask about it; but, 
when employed in this complete way, 
this strangely self-adjusting volume 
so far explains, balances and ar- 
ranges its own separate utterances, 
and the harmony of them, as that 
the moral perspective of the whole 
becomes practically trustworthy in 
leading men to duty and to God, and 
even "infallible," if you wish to in- 
sist on that word — I am not afraid of 
it — as a moral guide. And this can- 

[39] 



A PLAIN MAN'S WORKING VIEW 

not be said with the same truth of 
any other book or cluster of books. 

So here I am at the top of my four 
steps, having made, to my own ap- 
prehension, at least, no irrational 
jump to get there. I start with na- 
ture and end with a supreme Christ, 
without a break. I start with reason 
and end with faith, without a break. 
I cannot reach my third and fourth 
steps except by way of my first and 
second; but once well up the first and 
second, I am irresistibly led on to the 
third and fourth. 

Now this does not tell me who 
wrote Genesis; but it keeps me rea- 
sonably quiet and serene while the 
critics are finding out who wrote 
Genesis. Our argument lies beneath 
the critical discussion as to the pre- 
cise date or the authorship of the 
documents. 

[40] 



OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 

And the final conclusion is this. 
Here is a volume which, as a whole, 
possesses unity, and is, beyond any 
other volume, a trustworthy moral 
guide. Infallible? Yes, practically, 
and in a working sense, if you take 
the whole of it. I do not pin my faith 
upon any one particular verse by it- 
self. This has been the curse of the 
sectarian ages. I can prove any- 
thing, if I am required to produce 
only one text for it. It is the perspec- 
tive of the whole, the rhythm of the 
entire Bible, that can be preeminently 
counted on and trusted; and that can. 
What more do you want? This is 
precisely what we do want. We do 
not want a petty infallibility, a mere 
literal inerrancy, even were that pos- 
sible, a baby inerrancy, that would 
keep men in the intellectual nursery. 
That would be puerile and unworthy 

[41] 



A PLAIN MAN'S WORKING VIEW 

of God. We want something that 
comes to the strong free brain of a 
live man, as the result of the exercise 
of his own intelligence. To provide 
such a thing as that w T ould be likely 
to be a great God's way with his 
own child. 

Verbal infallibility, in the sense of 
the literal mechanical inerrancy of 
every separate text and phrase, taken 
by itself, is an irrational and impos- 
sible dream in regard to a book which 
is to be translated into a hundred dif- 
ferent languages, and retranslated 
from age to age. So much of quick- 
silver mingles with language, as a re- 
sult of the subtle growth of words and 
the changing minds of men, that 
literal inerrancy, which is to be equally 
inerrant in a hundred languages and 
a hundred epochs, is inconceivable. 
But the divine method of securing 

[42] 



OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 

practical religious trustworthiness 
in a book which is to be a world's 
Bible is a far finer and deeper 
method than that of verbal exac- 
titude. 

And the finer method is this — 
to aid and inspire chosen men 
themselves to evolve a Bible which, 
as a whole, shall be infallibly self- 
adjusting to the fair mind; for this 
puts a premium upon our own reason 
and our own moral intuition, and 
upon our exercise of them, upon that 
which is "likest God within the soul." 
We may thus examine and compare, 
collate and adjust, interpreting the 
details of the Bible in consistency 
with its own main principles and 
laws, just as we study and inter- 
pret physical nature, that other 
Book of God. So the human mind 
itself is educated into fellowship with 

[43] 



A PLAIN MAN'S WORKING VIEW 

that Divine Source from whom both 
it and its Bible came. 

And the experimental proof of the 
soundness of this view is that men 
and women who take the whole and 
entire Bible in this way do, as a matter 
of fact, go right in life. They who, 
not singling out isolated texts and 
forcing them into unnatural perspect- 
ive, take the whole Bible in its 
large, beautiful, progressive symme- 
try, rather than a sectarian slice 
of it, do find duty and see God. 
They find their noblest selves and 
become our best class in the com- 
munity. 

I must not multiply closing words. 
The argument has been presented 
at a speed, which allows only of 
outline, and it leads on much farther 
than can be followed now — even to 
the heart of Christ; but in these 

[44] 



OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 

initial and crucial stages of it, it 
seems to me solid and verifiable, 
recognizing that inevitable, impera- 
tive word of my college corres- 
pondent — " reasonably." 

The method of the argument, as I 
have sketched it, is both scientific 
and sacramental, appealing both to 
the critical reason and to the 
moral sense in their order — in a 
word, to the entire binocular of the 
soul. 

And these are the four steps of it. 
May I name them again ? 

First. Occasional very high lit- 
erary inspiration. 

Second. General supremely high 
moral inspiration. 

Third. Many clearly demonstra- 
ble instances and flashes of appar- 
ently superhuman spiritual inspir- 
ation. 

[45] 



A PLAIN MAN'S WORKING VIEW 

Fourth. These turret-top lights so 
distributed and so commanding as 
to be largely explanatory of the re- 
mainder of Scripture, so that a sane, 
free soul can walk in the light of such 
a Book, can fight in the glory of such 
a Book, can die in the peace of such a 
Book, and at the end of all know that 
he has done his whitest and his best; 
and so that — may I say, without any 
cheapness of sentiment, which is the 
last thing tolerated in these twentieth 
century halls — the worn maternal 
hands, which at last are folded in 
white, have never done a finer thing 
than to give that Book to you and to 
me. 

It is hardly going too far to say 
that we need the entire Bible prop- 
erly to interpret any word in it. But 
the entire Bible, taken fairly, does 
interpret, in a practical and working 

[46] 



OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 

way, every word in it, and this 
total impression is just and true. 
It leads me, certainly and surely, to 
the gates of life, to the bosom of the 
Father. 

That, my comrades, is the right 
kind of Book for you and for me. 



[47] 



NOV 23 S90 1 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: May 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



014 165 438 A 



